Tornadoes kill 3 in Michigan...

More tornadoes hit the U.S. on Thursday and early Friday morning, causing damage and injuries in Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky, and Florida. A 29-year old man was killed in Kalkasaka County, Michigan, when a tornado destroyed his home. Two other people were killed in Williamston, Michigan, after a tornado destroyed their lakefront home. In Nappanee, Indiana, five people were injured and 20 homes destroyed by a tornado at 10:30 pm. At least eight people were injured in western Kentucky from a series of tornadoes that raked the area, and a tornado hit downtown Pensacola, Florida, flipping cars and damaging the town's main shopping mall. A tornado that hit near Paris, Missouri, killing two people just after midnight on Thursday, was rated as an EF-2 storm with top winds of 135 mph.

The storm system that spawned this week's severe weather has moved over the Eastern U.S., and there is a chance of severe weather today from Florida northwards to New England, according to the latest severe weather outlook from the Storm Prediction Center. Only isloated tornadoes are likely today, as the atmosphere is not nearly as unstable as it was Wednesday and Thursday.

"Medicane" (Medepression?) hits SpainA tropical storm-like system swept over the island of Majorca in the Mediterranean on Wednesday, triggering flooding that killed two people. The storm then made landfall on the Mediterranean coast of Spain yesterday morning near the city of Murcia. The satellite presentation of the storm at landfall (Figure 1) showed well-formed spiral bands and a cloud-free center. Murcia, Spain reported sustained winds of 30 mph, gusting to 45 mph, at 14 GMT Thursday. A personal weather station in Santa Pola recorded sustained winds of 40 mph, gusting to 45 mph, and 0.68 inches of rain during passage of the storm. We have a number of other personal weather stations in the region, but none reported higher winds, or a pressure lower than 1013 mb. Radar from the Spanish Instituto Nacional de Meteorologia (Figure 2) showed some well-organized banding. The UKMET model did not indicate the storm had a warm core, so this was likely not a true tropical depression. Sea surface temperatures were about 23° C (about 1° C warmer than normal) under the storm, which is quite a bit colder than the 26.5° C usually associated with tropical storm formation. The satellite presentation suggests that the storm was probably generating a shallow warm core near the surface, and was getting some of its energy from release of latent heat--the same energy source that powers tropical cyclones. Yesterday's "Medepression" was probably a hybrid tropical/extratropical storm, and was predominantly non-tropical.

Warm-cored hybrid storms have been reported in the Mediterranean Sea before, and there is a large body of scientific literature published on the subject (see below). These storms can become quite severe and cause considerable damage. However, there is no system in place to name these storms, and the National Hurricane Center is not responsible for issuing warnings in the Mediterranean Sea. There are quite a few "Medicanes" in past years that would have earned names as subtropical storms had NHC been responsible for warnings in the Mediterranean Sea. There is concern that global warming may raise sea surface temperatures enough in the Mediterannean later this century to allow full-fledged hurricanes to form and threaten the densely populated cities that dot the coast.

Some of the scientific literature discussing hybrid storms in the Mediterrean Sea:

How to search for strongest winds from a stormA good way to search for the strongest winds from a storm in our personal weather station data is to load a google map for the region of interest:

http://www.wunderground.com/stationmaps/gmap.asp? zip=00000&wmo=08360

Then, click on the station plot for stations of interest. The history page will then pop up, allowing one to see plots and tabular data for today beginning at midnight local time for the station. Airport weather data and conditions from U.S. buoys are also available on the same google map. Use the search box at upper right to change the location the map is centered on.

Tropical updateThe tropical Atlantic is quiet today. The GFS model is predicting formation of a tropical cyclone on Tuesday about 800 miles east of the Lesser Antilles Islands. None of the other models are going along with this forecast. If there are no major developments to report this weekend, I may not update this blog until Monday.

Tigger that is one hell of a job on that truck for your kid........wow what effort. Your son will be very proud of you when he is old enough to really understand how much you love him to do such a thing....Great MOTHER!

no not yet.....i already did my local course here from Sep 2006 to Aug 2007. And I'm currently awaiting and preparing myself to go the University of West Indies (Jamaica Campus)in Sep 2008, if all goes well. I have no degrees as of yet. Only a certificate that says I'm educated on the basics. I also have a passion for business..buts that another story. So 4 now until my bachelors,/masters..i'm just a hobbyist.

You got it Baha - Passion must be the key word, the gentleman is weather "Party Animal" - lol!!

I would say though, that many other bloggers are also excellent, including yourself - thanks!!

A note on Meso - he may be a naughty spammer, but I think we have to be somewhat open minded here - lets give him a chance to show his true colors, whatever they may be! If he "lands" here again- lol!!!

You got that right 23, when I watched Wilma "bomb out", my jaw was on the floor and I was terrified!! Living in WPB, I saw that the track was right through this area from the get go, if the Yucatan had not slower her down we would have been flattened! God Bless the folks who live there, they went through Dantes inferno!! As it was it finished off my roof(since replaced), but we got through it. I just imagine what will happen when a large Andrew hits between Lauderdale and Miami - there is NO way that all those folks can be evacuated, just a matter of time.....

Hey 456 - your posts are incredible - you consistenly show a myriad of events that I would NEVER have seen. You are a veritable font of info., but the graphics, with the associated explanations are truly remarkable.

Back in 2005 on this day wilma had just begun here norhward turn followed by the turn toward to the NE on a path that almost put the florida keys in incredible disaster.Just a few miles to the south and iam afraid the loss of life could have been really significant.To this day iam thankful wilma ran into land cause if not all of southflorida could have experienced much more significant winds approaching cat4 status on the west coast and cat3 winds on the eastcoast.The highest gust i recorded with my anemometer was 87mph around 720am that morning as it was pushing through south florida.

477. 456 that map shows the heavy rainfall accumlations across the SE Bahamas as well. On the TRIMM map, Long Island is the one banded with yellow just west of the orange blob of even higher convection. This is where they had record flooding that forced people to evacuate their homes.

Wow...and NASA did not mentioned it...the article was from Earth Obs Center.

477. 456 that map shows the heavy rainfall accumlations across the SE Bahamas as well. On the TRIMM map, Long Island is the one banded with yellow just west of the orange blob of even higher convection. This is where they had record flooding that forced people to evacuate their homes.

During the first week and a half of October 2007, frequent heavy rains spawned by a persistent trough of low pressure stretched across the northwestern Caribbean, leading to floods and mudslides in several countries. The torrential rains were responsible for at least 47 fatalities in Haiti in villages north of the capital, said the AFP wire service on October 14. The poor island nation is especially vulnerable to mudslides due to deforestation in its mountainous regions. Cuba reported a 24-hour rainfall total as high as 306 millimeters (about 12 inches). The same weather pattern also impacted Jamaica and Central America. According to Reuters, a rain-induced landslide in Costa Rica buried 14 people, and at least 20 people had died across Central America as of October 14.

This image shows the heavy rainfall as observed by the near-real-time, Multi- satellite Precipitation Analysis (MPA). Based on measurements taken by Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite, the MPA is used to monitor rainfall over the global tropics. The rainfall totals shown here are from October 4 through October 14, 2007. The highest rainfall totals for the period (shown in red) are located right along and just off the southern coast of Cuba, and they are around 400 to 500 millimeters (about 16 to 20 inches). Haiti received at least 100 mm (about 4 inches) of rain, shown in green. Jamaica, Costa Rica, and El Salvador also received substantial amounts of rain.

TRMM is a joint mission between NASA and the Japanese space agency, JAXA.